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I actually agree with you mostly, but you're not gonna like it.

One thing I will point out though - "I just don't connect gun regulations as an effective solution to mass murder."

We have data on this. Take Australia. In the 21 years leading up to Port Arthur and that massacre itself, which triggered the nation into heavily regulating guns, there were 16 mass murders of four or more people, totaling 137 murders. Since then, there have been 12, with a total of 76 murders. This despite there being population growth.

Violent crime rate has dropped from 1996 to now, mainly from reductions in robbery and a small drop in homicide rates.

There is very clear evidence that if most guns are removed from circulation, there are very real and likely benefits when it comes to reducing violent crime in general and murder.

I'm a political moderate and pragmatic. I go with what works. Don't care how liberal or conservative the solution is. I'm never in favor of regulation that is ineffective at solving problems.

And to that end, I'm against most gun control measures. I'm on board with banning assault weapons, fully automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, but most gun control things like psychiatric evaluations, universal background checks? No.
Why? Because societal models we know that provided real progress on problems seemed to suggest one thing - it's the prevalence of guns that is the problem. If you make it marginally harder to buy guns by things like...

Three day waiting periods
Universal background checks
Psychiatric evaluations

They don't work. Banning guns works, though. It's worked time and time again. Australia, Britain, over and over and over, if guns lose prevalence, violence, murder, etc. decrease significantly.

At some point, society has to decide that giving up guns is worth it. But until that time, "common sense" gun control is a waste of time, and I quite frankly think it might do real effective gun control measures harm because when nothing gets better from these mild measures, they're going to point that out.

Knee jerk?! As if this wasn't beyond the 500th mass shooting in under 2 years, 1516 in 1735 days.
That's a total bullshit position, along with "this isn't the time" arguments. When mass shootings happen daily, pretending we must wait for a shooting free month, season, year before we can rationally tackle the issue is asinine. We can't make it 1/2 week without 3.
I agree, all those things you mention factor into the issue, but the easiest, simplest, most effective tool, proven effective in multiple cases, is gun control, and it is the best return for your investment, as it's by far the cheapest. (I own guns).
People intent on mass murder may not be deterred, but they are absolutely, unequivocally hindered by regulations from causing exponentially more damage. It's just retarded that some people don't grasp that fact and instead continue to advocate for fewer regulations....as if he wouldn't have purchased a Vulcan cannon if he could have.

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Even the non-firearm homicide rate in the US is 5 times that of Japan. Japanese gun control can't take credit for all that. Personality is more than 50% heritable, and by extension, so is violent behavior. (Case in point: the vegas killer's father was on the FBI most wanted list). Personalitywise, Japanese tend to be relatively meek and inhibited. Even if every one of them owned a gun, their murder rate would probably still be a fraction of the US murder rate.

1. Mass shootings are <1% of the murder rate, and murder is <1% of the death rate. Getting wound up about mass shootings is as dumb as getting wound up about terrorism. They're both very small in relation to how much people freak out.
2. We already have lots of gun control. Especially in places like California, where the killer bought most of his guns legally and passed a background check.

3. Bump stocks were the real problem. Even the NRA is open to restricting bump stocks. Let's do that.

4. Let's not go overboard with the Australian solution. Australia's murder rate almost halved from 1990 to 2015, and people erroneously give the buyback credit for that, but in that same 25 year time span the US murder rate went down even more (from 9.4 to 4.5 per 100,000) The murder rate went down everywhere in that time frame due to banning leaded gasoline that causes brain damage. Also due to some smaller factors (more abortion, better software for predictive policing).

I think everybody advocating for even more gun control needs to put a nice 24" sign on their yard saying "This home not protected by firearms." For some reason most people hesitate to do that. It's like herd immunity for viruses. General gun ownership keeps everybody safer even if they don't own one, criminals don't like to confront armed people.

"By comparing criminal victimization surveys from Britain and the Netherlands (countries having low levels of gun ownership) with the U.S., Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck determined that if the U.S. were to have similar rates of "hot" burglaries as these other nations, there would be more than 450,000 additional burglaries per year where the victim was threatened or assaulted. (Britain and the Netherlands have a "hot" burglary rate near 45% versus just under 13% for the U.S., and in the U.S. a victim is threatened or attacked 30% of the time during a "hot" burglary.)"

Ban semi-automatic weapons?

How reasonable is it to legislate to control clip capacity? As in, is it practical, not is the law actually passable, because with the current POTUS I'd be surprised if any sort of gun control was possible.

Tbh I still feel that even without 900rpm the capacity for a single bad actor to snuff out lives with a semi-auto rifle and 30 round mag is enormous. Doubtless they'd be people alive today who aren't now if he didn't have a bump stock... but it'd still be another mass murder with far too many people having to bury their loves ones. Idk. Progress of a sort maybe...

And yet, gun laws DEMONSTRABLY work in other countries. There are plenty of other countries with high gun ownership rates (Canada, for instance), but nowhere outside the 3rd world has anything like the gun-related death rate of the US.

Meanwhile, you are caught up in some ridiculous fantasy where you save America from imaginary Hitler.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/6l4l6m/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-scapegoat-hunter---gun-control

edit: fine don't embed the video, then!

In open warfare of govt vs people, drones don't matter, just like jets don't matter. I already covered this above.



Nowhere is an oppressive dictatorship - until it is.
[redacted]
I feel like people are too distracted with instagram and other B.S. to bother learning about how the world works.
History is long. The current peace is an anomaly. When things go bad, there is little warning. If you're lucky, a year or so of build up. If you're not lucky, weeks or days. Shit likes to spiral.
In bad times, you have only what you have on hand.


Most western countries with [regardless of gun ownership] don't have a population that's F'd in the head.
Nothing stops a German gun owner from taking his AR15 and shooting up a concert.
Storing his guns in a safe that he can open doesn't mean anything.
Paying for a new license card for every few guns doesn't alter the guns.

Gun laws, as proposed, are fluff. Nothing that makes people safer, nothing that prevents ownership, but plenty to crap on collectors.
* 10 round limit = 2 second pause to reload
* Gun show loophole is a misnomer.
* (re. above) Only private sales (gun show or not) don't require checks - but you still end up in court if the buyer does something bad.
* Assault weapons ban only bans pistol grips and threaded barrels. Cosmetics. Just google "California compliant AR15" (they already have a de-facto AWB).
* There's already laws against straw purchase.
* There's already laws against crazy people buying (already part of the background check)
* Registration is pointless as gun control. Doesn't alter the guns or who has them (background check already tells gov who, when, and where bought a gun).

(I'd sooner vote for mandatory roll cage and 6 point harness in every car. Could eliminate 90+% of car fatalities in one rule - if people cared enough.)


By the way, gun owners hate people like the Vegas shooter even more than anti-gunners hate people like him.
Precisely because assholes like that shooter make anti-gunners turn on their frustration on innocent gun owners.

The call to "do something" is the phrase that perfectly describes the sentiments that led to actions, that in turn became described by either "famous last words" or "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".





We had shit health insurance before Obama. We had shit insurance during Obama (only you're required by law to buy it, even if it's not a good value), we continue to have shit health insurance during Trump, and no matter what trump does, it will still be shit.
Problem is that the insurance company lobbyists draft the language of the law (no matter the party in charge), and it's not for our benefit.





Re. Minorities, most are living normal lives. The white eutopia that the few vocal people complain about, doesn't exist. At least I have yet to see it. Don't let a few thousand people in a nation of millions guide your thoughts about overall social norms.

I'm happy to see them protest. Frankly, I wish white people had the same solidarity that black people have. When a black gets shot by a cop, they come together. When a white is shot by a cop, other whites say "he probably deserved it". I wish the black community good luck and success.





Yes, I wish we weren't jailing more people than anywhere else on the planet, over things that harm nobody.
I wish we had the drug laws of Portugal (decriminalization)
I wish we had the legal system of Sweden (no jail before conviction).

Know how I said that most countries don't have as many people that are F'd in the head? Same applies for people in government.
None of this shit will get fixes.
Republicans are bible thumping retards that funnel money to defense contractors and campaign donors.
Democrats are buck-passing censors that funnel money to insurance companies and campaign donors.
And people just pick a team and bark at the other team, while each gets fleeced by their very own side.

-scheherazade

Two words easily dismiss your entire argument: predator drones.

Look, there are plenty of other countries with high gun ownership rates, but a few sensible regulations stop this kind of shit happening, and guess what? Those countries aren’t oppressive dictatorships, they’re modern, progressive societies.

Meanwhile, the USA, for all your talk of guns preventing dictatorship is a disgrace. You have have bigoted asshole running your country, your healthcare is barbaric (and they’re trying to make it worse), your tax system is ridiculous and your minority citizens are being criticised for daring to protest about the systemic racism they have to endure.

Gun control won’t make your country “less free”, because it’s already ranked pretty low there. But it will certainly lower the number of mass shootings.

Thoughts:

1) There has been a ban on sales of new, fully-automatic firearms ("machine guns") since 1986. That leaves some loopholes (can still buy them if they were manufactured before then, but that demand plus scarcity makes them expensive, etc.) but in general, there isn't a whole lot of uproar over that 20-year-old ban.

2) These bump-fire stocks don't technically convert a firearm into fully-automatic; the trigger is still being pulled 1 time for each bullet that comes out (semi-automatic).

3) However, they easily allow for rates of fire (bullets per minute/second) comparable to fully-automatic weapons. So, I think an unbiased and reasonable person would say that while a firearm equipped with one of these does not violate the letter of the ban on fully-automatic firearms, it does quite reasonably violate the spirit of that ban.

4) Doing anything to correct that discrepancy will require updated laws. Updating the law requires a legislature that generally supports the update and a president that agrees, or a legislature that overwhelmingly supports the update and can override a presidential veto.

5) None of that exists at the moment in the US. So, it is (perhaps coldly) logical to say that these bump-fire stocks will not be banned as an extension to the 1986 ban on full-auto firearms, at least not in the short term.

6) However, before quietly accepting that, it is worth noting that political fallout amongst those individuals in the legislature that refuse to consider updating the law is a very real possibility. Plenty of people, even on the right, even plenty of gun nuts, say that they are in favor of some degree of "common sense" gun control. Pointing out that bump-fire stocks essentially circumvent the already in-place ban on fully-automatic firearms seems like a good way to test that professed adherence to common sense.

7) Get that word out there, and pretty importantly, try to do it in a way that is as respectful towards the average "gun nut" as possible. Their minds can be swayed. Hunters, sportsmen, and even people that have guns for self defense can be persuaded with reason -- they can still do their thing even without bump-fire stocks, just like they can do their thing without fully-automatic firearms. Congresscritters probably can't be convinced, because they've already been bribed"persuaded" with campaign donations, NRA lobbyists, etc.


So, don't preach to the choir. Try to convince the people that do actually own guns. The good news? You've got "common sense" on your side.

Every Democratic presidential candidate is already painted by the NRA as determined to take your guns, regardless of what they've said or how they've voted.

Might as well embrace it and at least generate some interest among voters who are in favor of gun control. I'd support a candidate who chants "Grab those guns" at rallies . . . I mean, at least up until they're assassinated.

@enoch, you seem to be under the impression that you or I or anyone else has some kind of right to say whatever the fuck we feel like saying on the sift.

We don't. This isn't some public forum, it's a privately run website and @dag or @lucky760 have the right to decide if they don't want @gorillaman calling Obama a "nigger prince".

The sad thing is, I mostly agree with his post, but that one stupid epithet undermined his whole point and made him look like an ignorant fool.

And yeah, I'll fucking say it, calling Obama a "nigger" offends me, and not in some sensitive snowflake way. It should fucking offend you too, and frankly, I have no problem whatsoever with either dag (in his Siftler guise) or us as a community deciding that that's not cool and we don't want it here.

Free speech is not absolute, and anyone who thinks it is is deluding themselves. There are well-documented limits to free speech (yelling "fire" in a public theatre, joking about bombs at airports). Once you accept that something is not absolute, you then simply have to argue the degree to which limits apply (same as gun control, if you accept that civilians can't have nukes, then you're already in favour of gun control, you're just arguing over the extent).